Engaging in Reasoned Discourse (tm).

@ Cathy's place.

I'm cross posting my reply here just in case it gets lost in Reasoned Discourse (tm) limbo.

"A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used in an unintentional shooting, than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense."

That's down from the "43 times more likely" they used to claim. They also made sure to qualify self-defense as injuring or killing, in order to avoid the fact that the majority defensive gun uses (99.9%) don't even require the individual to fire a shot, meaning a gun is more likely to prevent a crime without bloodshed than be involved in an unintentional shooting.

"85% of Americans want mandatory handgun registration."

Assuming handgun registration becomes mandatory, what will it accomplish? New Zealand repealed their gun registration law in the 1980s after police acknowledged its worthlessness. More than likely because most people simply refuse to register their guns. When Germany began it's comprehensive gun registration in the 70s, by their estimate, they only had a 20% compliance rate. And among criminals, there is a 0% compliance rate, because criminals don't register their guns.

85% of Americans want a background check and 5-day waiting period before a handgun is purchased.

If you buy a gun from a licensed dealer, a background check is done. And in the states where they've outlawed privates sales of firearms, background checks have to be done on all handgun sales. Also, all interstate sales of firearms must go through a background check as well.

A 5-day waiting period is useless as the average "time-to-crime" for a gun involved in a criminal shooting is 12 months. To make any real impact, waiting periods would have to be ridiculously long and more than likely will be shot down by even the most liberal of courts.

"More Americans were killed by guns than by war in the 20th Century."

Well, duh. It doesn't take a statistician to figure that one out. We live in a country with enough guns to arm every 2 out of 3 people. We also live in a country that hasn't had a war on it's soil in over 100 years. So naturally, the chances of an American dying in war will be incredibly slim while your chances of dying by gunfire will be much higher. Guess what? Your chances of dying in a car accident are higher than either of them.

"Toy guns and teddy bears have more federal manufacturing regulations than real guns."

That's because the gun industry has it's own regulatory body: http://www.saami.org/

They do such a good job of voluntarily setting safety standards for firearms, the government has yet to see the need to step in and regulate.

"Every day 79 people are killed by firearms in America."

"Every day 79 people are killed by firearms in America."

Of that 79, half of them are people who want to die (suicides). The other half (homicides) are a mixture of criminal-on-criminal, police-on-criminal, citizen-on-criminal, and criminal-on-citizen. While dead is dead, there should at least be more investigation of who is dying and who is doing the killing.

"Medical costs from gun injuries and deaths cost $19 billion. The US taxpayer will pay half of that cost."

The US taxpayer will also pay for the damages of rampant illegal immigration, researching fruit-fly mating, and the Pentagon's $100 toilet seats. We all end up paying for things we don't particularly like or benefit from. That's the cost of living in America.